Y8 English Lit - is it appropriate to ask pupils to draw characters/scenes for homework?

[cavell]

That's it, really.

DD1 is in Y8 of a grammar school and, for the fourth time this year, her English homework has been along the lines of "read the description of so-and-so on pages 18-21, and make a sketch of him/her/it".

Is it me, or is this pointless and inappropriate homework for this age group (supposedly of high ability, given that it's a grammar school)? I feel inclined to complain, but wonder whether I am simnply out of touch with how things are done in schools these days.

Totally rubbish....teaches nothing. If you want them to show understanding without formal writing then a mind map or notes would be better.

I don't see why it would be inappropriate for an occasional homework.

Although a "character sketch" can also mean sketching with words ( ie notes) so you could choose to get your daughter to interpret it this way.

fourth time this year - do you mean this school year or 2013?

If that's all there is to it, then it's not brilliant.

If it's 'read the description, draw the character & label with 6 key quotations selected from pages 18-21', with a view to the discussing their quote choices in class & using them as the basis of an analytical essay, that would be more the sort of thing I'd set for top set year 8.

(I teach English in a good comp.)

If I set reading homework, then I want to make sure the students have done it and that they understand it. I either ask my students to write a paragrpah summary, a bullet point summary or answer some study questions which require them to demonstrate their understanding. This is just another way of getting the students to show they understand what has happened.

They're probably heading towards an essay or extended written task which they may not be able to start working on until they have finished the whole novel/play.

Drawing a character is quite a challenging homework if done properly.

Ie. inference of knowing what period the character is in. Expression on their face, behaviour. I would expect the diagram to be labelled and the child to show that they truely understood the text and could read between the lines. (inference)

Sketch in this instance very definitely means "drawing a picture" in the literal sense, not in the metaphorical sense of "drawing picture with words". She is meant to colour it in, fgs!

One homework specified labels - but this was along the lines of "brown wavy ahir" and "ragged dress".

I think it sounds rubbish. But that's just me.

"fourth time this year" means this school year.

I've just asked dd for clarity on this and she said: "Mrs X said she doesn't like marking essays as she's dyslexic so that's why we have to do pictures".

No, it's not good, especially for a child who isn't strong on drawing! We used to get English homeworks like this all the time when I was 11/12 and I hated them.

Shit and lazy. I hate this. I see it all the time at the school where I work. Cutting and sticking, drawing, colouring in. Kids waste so much time on art work outside of actual art lessons - It's bloody secondary school, FGS!!! Resllytired: you can show all the things you listed without wasting an hour trying to draw an accurate picure by bullet point descriptions of characters and their appearance or characteristics or asking pupils questions such as "how does the author let us know that blah blah blah" for inference without having to draw bloody expressions onto faces.

I was top set at school and on the very rare occasion that we were asked to draw pictures outside of art lessons I used to inwardly sigh. For a clever pupil who is lacking in natural artistic ability it really takes away from the point of an English lit or history lesson. It would take me 2 hours of huffing and puffing to get the expression or clothes of a character right whereas I could have done a list of bullet points to demonstrate to the teacher that I understood the topic.

Lazy teaching, IMO. Leave the art to the art lessons, please, particularly top sets. In depth or succinct written description is a skill which needs practising, NOT colouring in!

DS hates drawing homeworks - luckily doesn't get them often, but has the occasional 'draw a cartoon strip' to illustrate something. He really, really can't draw, so does stick figures. It sounds a bit pointless for year 8 English.

Again - storyboarding to show understanding of the structure of the text is something I do sometimes. & stick figures are fine. (I can't draw either!)

I would be annoyed too. Bad enough when homework for most sunjecvts in the first half term of year 7 was draw a poster.....
Terrible for those that cannot draw well.

DD2 (yr5) has just been given a drawing task related to the first page of their latest text. Just about appropriate for that age group.

Why are schools doing this these days? I hate to say such a hackneyed phrase but it smacks of dumbing down..,,,,,

Look, it really all does depend on the context.

If the situation is really that this teacher is consistently setting pointless drawing HWs because she isn't actually able to mark extended written responses, then the HW situation is the least of the OP's problems with her dd's English teaching, tbh.

But Eng Lit these days is about detailed analysis, not, as it was when I did O Level, a test of whether you can remember what happens in the book & rote-reproduce a few quotes to prove it.

There are excellent reasons for using character diagrams, storyboarding, mindmapping, retrieval grids etc as part of the process.

eg. a couple of years ago my year 10s were busily drawing & labelling the set of 'Death of a Salesman' based on the stage directions, as prep for an essay on 'Willy's house is an extended metaphor for the dissolution of his personality throughout the course of the text.'

It might be 'dumbing down' if a year 8 is being asked to do drawing tasks for English HW. But it genuinely might not.

Meanwhile, parents expect the classroom walls and corridors of the school adorned with display work produced by students.

"Meanwhile, parents expect the classroom walls and corridors of the school adorned with display work produced by students."

I don't! I don't think clutter is at all conducive to a calm & productive learning environment but I've discovered I'm a minority on that one.

DD gets this sort of homework all the bloody time - English, French & science (ffs) are the worst offenders - she hates it. Student complaints that that the lesson is English not art have so far fallen on deaf ears. Her latest science homework is to draw a cartoon strip of the process of human reproduction. The learning objective for that one are pretty good - must include clearly labelled diagrams of cells & structures involved etc - but why a cartoon? Why not just say ''describe the processes involved in human reproduction with diagrams"?

And the number of bloody posters they've had to produce - how about spending some time encouraging them to produce a coherent paragraph in legible handwriting instead?

It's not 'these days': I had to do this in 1989!

A talented artist could demonstrate understanding of a text via a drawing: a child who has no flair for art could not. It's not a good homework, and I say that as someone who always usually defends the teacher on here.

No, sorry, this is a crap homework, whatever you say, reallytired. And in my good comp we spell truly without an "e". Drawing is for Art or for very weak pupils who might struggle to express themselves. Pupils should not be having homework set to suit the (dyslexic) special needs of the teacher, but their own needs.

Trash. Analyse texts instead

Yes TOSN, expecting a child to demonstrate understanding entirely via the medium of skilful artistic expression would be a rubbish homework for lots of them - although not all, to be fair.

(I had a student some years ago who struggled enormously with basic literacy. I'm still using scans of his Macbeth character drawings in some of my interactive whiteboard resources - they are outstanding. Very Ralph Steadman.)

But you don't have to be able to draw well in order to produce a visual representation of Curley's Wife, say, & explain how her appearance is described in cinematic detail in order to imply stuff about her character & to foreshadow her fate. You could do it perfectly well with a labelled silhouette or a collage of images from magazines.

I'm not saying there isn't a problem with OP's dd's homework - I think there almost certainly is. & if students are constantly producing art in 'English, French & Science' as an end in itself, then that is indeed lazy. But it can very definitely be used as one type of task amongst many in effective learning.